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British sociologist, Harry Collins (2010), recently attempted to redefine tacit knowledge from the perspective of scientific knowledge-making. Collins identifies three reasons for why the concept of tacit knowledge has been misunderstood. First, he suggests that Polanyi is partially to blame for the confusion as in his Personal Knowledge, the argument is not clear or consistent and the tacit dimension is seen as mystical and special concept rather than an unremarkable aspect of everyday life. Second, Collins argues that tacit knowledge seems problematic or unusual because of our modern society’s fixation to explicit knowledge. Third, Collins suggests that we should be more concerned with tacit knowledge rather than tacit knowing. One key problem that Collins sees in our attempts to understand tacit knowledge is what he refers to as the ‘socialization problem’. As he acknowledges, “[W]e can describe the circumstances under which [tacit knowledge] is acquired, but we cannot describe or explain the mechanism… until we have solved the socialization problem” (Collins 2010: 138).

For Collins (2010: 1), “tacit knowledge is knowledge that is not explicated”. His account of the tacit is influenced by his interest in computer capability. His main endeavor is to understand what aspects of knowing cannot be transformed – at least at theoretical level – into computer language. All that can be transformed – theoretically – is what we call

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explicit; that which cannot be transformed is the tacit. This account is quite different to that proposed in Polanyi’s work in which all knowing, including that which we call ‘explicit’, relies upon tacit processes and elements. For Polanyi, tacit knowing is no different to any kind of knowing, although some aspects of knowing have explicit components and some do not. As we saw previously, the subsidiaries upon which all knowing is dependent are tacit which implies that, for Polanyi, tacit knowledge includes knowledge that can be explicated. In addition, Collins treats knowledge as an objective entity available in society and culture to be analyzed. Polanyi, on the other hand, although does acknowledge a realm of cultural knowledge (Polanyi, 1962: 388-399), his account is built upon the notion of tradition to indicate a dominant vehicle of cultural continuity (Gulick, 2016). However, his prime concern is related to how knowledge arises in and is utilized by individuals. Thus, as Gulick (2016: 305) suggests, Polanyi’s title of his magnum opus should not be ‘Personal Knowledge’ but ‘Personal Knowing’ as the attention is in the individual’s processes of knowing whereas Collins’ account is about the social realm of knowledge. It is important to note here that Collins never clams that his intent is to be consistent with Polanyi’s definitions and develop its implications. In Tradition and Discovery (an academic journal dedicated to the advancement of Polanyi’s thought), a number of authors (e.g. Henry, 2011 and Lowney, 2011) have provided probing discussions of Collins’ work and Collins himself responded with the following clarification:

“I am a sociologist and my interest lies in the knowledge of groups, how knowledge spreads, how we can acquire different ways of seeing the world, and so on. I have no interest in individual creativity or insight except to say that without the idea of individual pioneers we could not have the form of life of science. Mostly, however, Polanyi’s stress on personal knowledge has tended

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to mislead people about what I was up to when they found the term ‘tacit knowledge’ in my writings” (Collins, 2011: 38).

In Polanyi’s view, what in one moment is tacit as a subsidiary awareness can become focal attention in moments of reflection, whereas for Collins the distinction between tacit and explicit is more strictly defined. One of the key arguments Collins makes in his book is the difference between transformation (strings) and translation (language). The former occurs in the physical world which is subjected to cause and effect forces whereas the latter is related to the use of language which creates meanings that are subject to translation by other human beings. Thus, language translation is different to string transformation because it always involves human interpretation and thus tacit knowledge. The world of transformation is the world of (often explicit) patterned ‘stings’ and, due to causality, all that appears tacit is – in theory – explicable.

More specifically, a string is any physical object with some kind of pattern inscribed on it (for example, a photograph is comprised of patterns of ink on a paper) or spoken words (patterns of compressed air). Stings, for Collins, transmit information through physical contact, in which patterns are transformed from one medium to another (for example, transformation of electric currents into patterns of pixels on a computer screen). Humans can act in this physical world like animals do through what Collins refers to as ‘mimeomorphic’ actions, while the physical world and human meanings can be engaged conceptually through ‘polimorphic’ actions. Earlier works by Collins (e.g. Collins and Kusch, 1998; Ribeiro and Collins, 2007) shed light on this distinction where a separation is established. Thus, there are two types of actions: (a) ‘mimeomorphic’, which is generally carried out with the same behavior exhibited indifferently in many occasions

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(e.g. typing in a number on a telephone keyboard), and (b) ‘polimorphic’, which is generally executed with many different behaviors depending on the social circumstances (e.g. greeting) (Collins and Kusch, 1988).

The key and perhaps innovative aspect of Collins’ work is his attention to define the ‘explicit’. He argues that considerable attention and effort has been placed on defining and understanding the tacit whereas the explicit or explicable is somewhat overlooked as obvious. Thus, Collins reverses the order as he attempts to define the nature of the explicit whereas his characterization of the tacit is quite simple. His introduction of the term ‘sting’ denotes physical things that contain information but mean nothing in themselves unless they are interpreted by humans using language. He thus offers three senses of explicating tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge through three forms of transformation: elaboration (“a longer string affords meaning when a shorter one does not”), transformation (“physical transformation of strings enhances their causal effect and affordance”), and mechanization (“a sting is transformed into mechanical causes and effects that mimic human action”) (Collins, 2010: 81). Tacit knowledge then, for Collins, is knowledge that cannot be transformed into an interpretable string (Collins, 2010: 81). In other words, if we can represent knowledge in a string – for instance, if we can write it down –then it is explicit, and if we cannot, then it is tacit.

What derives from the preceding discussion, therefore, is that Collins sets forward a dualistic world of ‘physical strings’ and ‘linguistic meanings’. Things can change according to more or less complex patterns of causal string transformation, whereas humans can additionally use certain types of strings, words uttered or written, to create a polymorphic world of meaning. The tacit aspects of our activities such as riding bicycles, reading X-

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rays, using probes, and understanding each other (these are examples that both Polanyi and Collins refer to) seem to belong to one category, that is, not being explicable by a person who experiences them. But for Collins, these represent the three distinct aspects of our experience of the tacit and Collins suggests that these “three kinds of tacit knowledge are indistinguishable when encountered in everyday experience” (Collins, 2010: 164).

To illustrate Collins’ three types of tacit knowledge it will be useful to use an example in order to demonstrate how each type of knowledge may be involved. In the example I used before – reading a map and getting around Manchester’s city center – let us assume that I have a car or a bicycle (more in line with Polanyi’s and Collins’ examples) to use in getting from Piccadilly station to MMU Business School. Let us also assume that I have done this before but on foot and, therefore, I have a fairly good idea of how to get from point A to point B. Also, let us say that a friend has given me some vague directions on how to get there easier using a bicycle. As I move around the streets I may choose one road that is a dead-end, so I have to go back and choose a different one but it turns out to be very busy without much space available to bikers. Then I decide to choose another street which means that I have to go around quite a bit before locating my destination. How this experience may be interpreted in Collins’ structure?

Collins builds up his conceptual framework based on a ‘three phase model’. The first category is termed Relational (or weak) Tacit Knowledge (RTK). In the example above, I had knowledge of the possible route and my friend suggested some other route but neither he/she nor I had knowledge of how exactly I could get there. An enhanced sting of information could have made my trip easier, e.g. having a GPS. But I still needed tacit

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knowledge on how to get there. So, according to Collins, if I had conversed more I may have understood ‘better’ as, for ordinary aspects of life, tacit knowledge is sufficient. So if I was perceived as ignorant on how to get from A to B, I could (and generally people do) have gained more knowledge through socialization. Such knowledge that is gained through apprenticeships, imitation and practice is, for Collins, quite enough to get us by with most aspects of life.

His second category is what he refers to as Somatic (or medium) Tacit Knowledge (STK). The very practice of riding a bicycle is an example of this category. Collins asks how this knowledge is transferred from one person to another and the answer is that we learn “from demonstration, guided instruction, and personal contact with others who can ride – the modes of teaching associated with tacit knowledge. That is why we say our knowledge is tacit – we cannot ‘tell it’ but we can have it passed on in ways which involve close contact with those who already have it” (Collins, 2010: 99). This is quite different to what Polanyi has argued in his writings on riding a bicycle. For Polanyi socialization and imitation are not enough qualities for someone to learn how to ride but requires personal achievement based on tacit bodily feelings, i.e. embodiment. Collins here seems to devalue this subjective aspect of knowing that Polanyi had in mind. He sees the tacit as an aspect of knowledge considered as an object of thought but an object that cannot adequately be put into explicit language, programmed in a computer, or transformed into a robotic achievement, such as balancing a bike. The laws of maintaining balance have, for Collins, been scientifically established and can be transformed into the cause and effect string behavior of a machine. For this reason, embodied skills which are experienced as tacit knowledge are not truly tacit since scientific investigation and

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technological innovation can render them explicit. So, for Collins, I may not be able to explicitly state how I keep my balance on a bike since I do not need to use explicit thought to control it. This is still a string-based phenomenon which appears tacit to me even if I consciously attend to or try to control what I do to maintain balance (Gulick, 2016). Thus far, for Collins, both STK and RTK can – at least in principle – be explicable; in other words, neither of these two categories is truly tacit. But the third category, Collective (or strong) Tacit Knowledge (CTK), is. This is knowledge that an individual can acquire only by being embedded in society; “this is called ‘strong’, because we know of no way to describe it or to make machines that can possess or even mimic it. Strong tacit knowledge is a property of society rather than the individual” (Collins, 2010: 11). Collins (2007: 259) argues, for instance, that while riding a bike requires itself only individual knowledge (i.e. RTK and STK),

“[N]egotiating traffic is a problem that is different in kind to balancing a bike, because it includes understanding social convention of traffic management. For example, it involves how to make eye contact with drivers at busy junctions in just the way necessary to assure a safe passage and not to invite an unwanted response” (Collins, 2007: 259).

What is expected of bike riders changes from culture to culture – it is a very different skill required to ride a bicycle in the U.K., for instance, to riding one in South East Asia – and even in one culture, expectations change over time. Riding in traffic is therefore a polymorphic skill in which culture, context, and thought play important roles which cannot be transmitted though explicit rules or sting causality. This is how I negotiated myself through different alternative routes in the earlier example in which my polymorphic skills of negotiating myself through the busy roads of Manchester city center coupled with my

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capability of understanding the cultural and collective norms of riding a bicycle in a busy road, allowed me to get to my destination.

For Collins, therefore, society – or, the collective part of knowledge – is crucial in influencing what humans think and do as it shapes a person’s life, values, and habits. I reflect upon what I have learned from other bikers and have observed about what is safe and what my abilities are in deciding what route I will take. But my decision is based on experiential individual evidence I have, rather than following or mimicking some collective ideal that dictates how I should go about in my everyday activities. Thus, what Collins’ analysis is underestimating is the importance of subjective interpretation that is counted as personal knowledge exhibited by individuals in their day-to-day activities. If we accept the premise that riding in traffic contains an uncodified tacit aspect of knowledge (or what Polanyi referred to as ‘ineffable’ or ‘unspecifiable’), then it should follow that individual experience of riding and learning a skill should too be counted upon as instances of such knowledge. Thus, the distinction between Somatic and Collective tacit knowledge could not be sustained as in both instances individual ‘felt experience’ of how to go about completing a task should take center stage.

Perhaps, one of the greatest problems in Collins’ account of the tacit is his insistence that society “is responsible for all our collective tacit knowledge” (Collins, 2010: 170). This claim underestimates individual experience and responsibility for interpretation of evidence or action by a person who performs a particular task. Recently, Stephen Turner (2014), an American sociologist, in his book Understanding the Tacit, has taken a critical stance against that particular claim made by Collins. One of the key questions in Turner’s account is ‘what are the phenomena, structures, and processes that most adequately

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provide the basis for understanding the tacit aspects of social processes and socially- based knowledge’? Turner’s sociological notion of the tacit is as follows: it “refers to the taken-for-granted and the distinctive but unacknowledged habits of mind or meaning- structures that make something taken-for-granted” (Turner, 2014: 1). Turner objects to how Collins interprets tacit knowledge as ‘collective’ as according to Turner (2014: 65):

“The big question is whether there is any reason to think that there has to be anything in the way of tacit knowledge that is shared or collective, that is, whether functional substitutability is enough – that each of us can get by with sufficient tacit knowledge of our own to function in a group and generate utterances that others can interpret, without sharing anything ‘tacit’”.

Turner is an advocate of sociological individualism. The social, for Turner, is the individual interacting in groups adjusting to each other through their use of tacit knowledge of how people react and interact. Beyond ‘collectivism’, Turner is also critical of Collins’s main arguments. “The fact that machines can stimulate something that humans do tells us nothing about how humans do it” (Turner, 2014: 62). He further argues that “the entire discussion of string transformations is irrelevant: [Collins] gives us no reasons to believe that what people do when they communicate has anything to do with strings, string transformation, or anything like it” (Turner, 2014: 62). The key argument in Collins’ account – as we saw above – is how string transformation can be interpreted. One can argue, in line with Collins, that string processes transfer information but not meaning. Another interpretation may be, however, that string transformation is a signal response to some kind of pattern recognition and that can only be made by a human who makes the interpretation. Collins (2010: 70) argues that “we have strings and we have interpreted strings” which implies that the latter interpretation is more in line with what Collins had in

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mind. One problem, however, still remains: what, for Collins, are the origins and transmission of the tacit?

There is no clear answer in Collins’s account. Turner, however, attempts to answers this question by suggesting that tacit knowledge is transmitted through hands-on activity or practice guided by an expert and is reproduced in the individual through attending to statements made by others and, crucially, these ‘others’ are individual persons and not collective objects or systems. Turner, terms this the ‘different tacit backgrounds’ of individuals who although may live in a shared culture or share the same traditions, their ‘backgrounds’ are still personal or individual. When persons draw upon their tacit knowledge in making an evaluation or assessment or taking an action, they will draw upon tacit knowledge that is not exactly the same as another individual in the same situation, because of their differences in backgrounds. Additionally, as a person acquires new experiences and thus novel tacit understandings, their worldview with their tacit knowledge can change, even if such change is minimal. Returning to the earlier example with the use of language, native speakers can understand each other not because they have the same tacit knowledge but because they have enough similarity to understand and acknowledge one another as sharing similar worldviews or traditions.

To sum up so far, for Collins, strings, whether are transformed or translated provide knowledge that can be applied in different situations depending on the action that an individual performs (e.g. mimeomorphic or polymorphic). But more crucially, the nature of a performed action is truly tacit when we engage in the social realm and perform actions that conform or otherwise within the particular societal context; and these actions can be said to be truly tacit because they cannot be fully explicated by a person who performs

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them. In writing this Chapter of the PhD, for example, my Relational and Somatic tacit knowledge is subjected to string transformation and translation in which the meaning of the content of the words on the piece of paper can be represented in a string as meaning is ascribed to both individual words and their connection. However, the problem lies on whether this chapter is at a PhD level as I am not able to explicate how or why I have presented the arguments in this way and not another, I have used one example over another, or I have structured the Chapter in this way and not another. This, as I understand, is for Collins, the collective or social aspect of knowledge that cannot be fully articulated and cannot be created or mimicked by a machine. Such a polymorphic action is then for Collins the truly tacit aspect of all knowledge that cannot be explicated.